1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to data transfer in packet switched (PS) network and more particularly relates to infrequent or frequent small data transfer using connectionless approach.
2. Description of the Related Art
In today's evolving mobile market, high end User Equipments (UEs) is sought after by majority of buyers. The UEs are loaded with variety of applications. Many of these applications on the UEs run in background and infrequently perform small amount of data exchange to and from a wireless cellular network. This changes the basic assumption of packet switched Long Term Evolution (LTE) network that there will always be a bulk data transfer. Open applications on the UEs such as email sync, stock market updates, weather updates, keep alive messages to the server, ping for updates with the server (chat/social networking servers) are few examples of applications when the UEs communicate with a server without user intervention. This communication over the wireless cellular network with small amount of data exchange to and from the server is infrequent in nature.
Existing methods require the UEs to transit from idle state to connected state, even for such infrequent communications that involve small amount of data exchange. The existing methods in LTE require the UEs to establish legacy dedicated Evolved Packet System (EPS) bearers (radio bearer, S1 bearer and S5/S8 bearer) between a UE, Radio Access Network (RAN) node and core network entities. The dedicated bearer refers to logical or virtual connection between the UE, RAN node and the core network entities. The established legacy dedicated bearer for the UE can be a default bearer or a dedicated bearer. The radio bearer transports data packets of an EPS bearer between the UE and the RAN node. The S1 bearer transports the data packets of an EPS bearer between the RAN node and a Serving Gateway (SGW) entity in the core network. The S5/S8 bearer transports the data packets of an EPS bearer between the SGW and the Packet data network Gateway (PGW) entity in the core network. There is a one-to-one mapping between radio, S1 and S5/S8 bearers for each EPS bearer established by the UE. This end-to-end EPS bearer realizes the negotiated Quality of Service (QoS) for the service.
The signaling overhead for establishment of dedicated bearer is very high as compared to the amount of data (infrequent small data) being transferred, affecting data transfer efficiency of the wireless cellular network. Moreover, with increase in Machine Type Communication (MTC) devices like power meters which generate small amount of data that is infrequently exchanged with the wireless cellular network leads to signaling congestion.
Multitude of such MTC devices try to switch to connected state for setting up dedicated EPS bearers for small amount of data exchange. This may lead to signaling congestion and increase the wireless cellular network resource consumption. With existing methods, frequent switching to connected state also drains battery of the UEs.